Standing Stones

Overview

Standing stones are the Skyrim equivalent to Morrowind and Oblivion's "Birthsign" specialization. However, unlike the Birthsigns, you can swap out your standing stone bonus at any point, just find another standing stone and activate it. Like the birthsigns, the standing stone can do things as simple as giving you a new spell to cast daily (e.g. The Serpent Stone) to making a major change on how your character plays (e.g. The Atronach Stone).

The first stones you find will probably be the warrior/mage/thief stones as they are just a quick jog out of Helgen. These give a 20% bonus to how quickly you level up skills in one of the 3 archetypes, so make sure to drop by and choose one to start leveling. Once you feel sufficient in your archetype, feel free to hunt down the rest of the stones.

List of Standing Stones

Click on the stone name for further information.

Glitch: The achievement for finding all 13 standings stones can be achieved without finding every stone. Simply fast travel to a stone you've discovered and your stats in the start menu will read that you've found other Standing Stone. I have supposedly found 17 Standing Stone.